I have noticed this theme with other products/services (including some of my own) that aim to level the playing field.
Why do you think this is?
It's a nice, heart-warming mission. But in the end of the day, content is king, that's what consumers want.
There have been many examples of people rallying around a "free and open" version of a service. They fail to realize that the end user barely cares. Look at voat (Reddit), app.net (Twitter), Diaspora (Facebook), and even ycreject.com (Y Combinator) tried to be a thing for a while.
If someone is able to make it "free and open" while also making it a better experience than the alternative, then it'll be a big success. But so far everyone gets that wrong.
It's probably not gaining traction because it's not anything unique or new.